Monica Fitzgerald, Ph.D. will visit Japan in September 2014!

[Scheduled TF-CBT Training in Tokyo ]

Monica Fitzgerald, Ph.D. from the Kempe Center (University of Colorado) will be providing 3-day TF-CBT training in Tokyo.

This is the second time that an American TF-CBT trainer is providing direct face-to-face training to Japanese clinicians and other professionals.

This IFCA sponsored event will be held at the Tsukuba University Tokyo Campus.

9/21/14            9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

9/22/14            9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

9/23/14            9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

This workshop is limited to 40 participants. After Dr. Fitzgerald returns to the U.S., she and her colleague trainers will continue to provide on-line supervision to the Japanese participants.

Dr. Monica Fitzgerald [Colorado Kempe Center}, Shiho Kunihiro [Interpreter] with the Tokyo TF-CBT Students

[ISPCAN Workshop in Nagoya]  

Monica Fitzgerald and IFCA’s selected alumni members will present an interactive workshop at the ISPCAN [International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect] Congress in Nagoya on September 16^th. The theme is foster care and mental health. Below is their abstract.

Fostering Well-being: Perspectives of Youth and Alumni of Foster Care

Foster care may provide for the physical well-being of young people, but are the youth that you work with experiencing more than meets the eye?

There are about 399,546 US youth in foster care (source: Child Welfare Information Gateway) and about 45,000 Japanese youth living in out-of-home placements, mostly in large group home facilities. Below the surface, youth in these two countries suffer from complicated emotions and trauma related to their past abuse and neglect and from an astounding lack of mental health services available to them; especially services which focus on evidenced-based practices but which also place value on youth experience. In both countries, foster youth have considerably worse outcomes than youth who grow up in traditional home settings. To combat these outcomes, International Foster Care Alliance (IFCA) seeks to create a venue for foster care alumni, professionals, and caregivers to collaborate on how to better serve foster youth

Through an interactive workshop, IFCA, Monica Fitzgerald, Ph. D. and Miyako Shirakawa, MD will share information about the rising use of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT).   In a twist on the usual style of presentation, the team of academic experts will be joined by experts of a different kind: alumni of the Japanese and American foster care systems who have special insights into the policies and practices that most impact young people. Alumni of care from the US and Japan will share their first hand experiences of foster care, under the framework of mental health and well-being, and facilitate activities and discussion with workshop participants on the value of adding youth perspective into evidence-based practices. Ultimately, professionals and alumni experts will argue that alongside caring for physical needs, societal investment in quality mental health support is vital to the success and well-being of our youth in care.

[Profile of Monica Fitzgerald, Ph.D]

Dr. Fitzgerald is an assistant professor at the Colorado University School of Medicine and the Training and Evaluation Director with the Child Trauma Program at the Kempe Center.

Dr. Fitzgerald’s clinical and research interests focus on the impact of maltreatment and trauma exposure on children’s psychosocial and emotional adjustment and the implementation of evidence-based, trauma-focused interventions in community service settings. She maintains a clinical practice and provides trauma-focused treatment to adults, children and families who have experienced abuse and other trauma.